A classy horror flick, in spite of all its philosophising

IT'S been 38 years since that slimy, sharp-toothed extra-terrestrial burst so memorably from John Hurt's chest in Alien, a film that remains the gold standard in the sci-fi horror genre. It's a blood-splattered scene that belongs in the pantheon of famous movie moments and made a star of a nightmarish creature drawn from the imaginings of surrealist artist HR Giger.

Director Ridley Scott, now pushing 80, returns to the source in Alien: Covenant, a prequel to Alien (plus three other films that followed) and a sequel to Prometheus (2012), Scott's less-than-satisfactory Alien-origins tale. Audiences will still have high-minded existential issues to ponder in this latest instalment (and one or two others to come) but the meaty part focuses on matters of a more visceral nature.

Basically, the crew of a spaceship gets picked off one by one until, well, you ought to know the drill by now. It's the year 2104 (a decade after Prometheus and many years before Alien takes place) and a solar flare has caused an incident aboard the colonist craft Covenant, where the android Walter (Michael Fassbender) brings crew members out of stasis several years before reaching their intended planetary destination.